I once took a screenwriting course with an instructor who believed that a
scenarist's job is to lead the audience carefully by the hand, as if a
motion picture were a minefield. Usually low-key and agreeable, he would
begin sputtering and turning red after just a few pages of one of my
scripts; invariably, he would eventually turn to me and protest, "You
can't do that -- you're gonna confuse the audience." My invariable reply
-- "I want to confuse the audience" -- only made him angrier. On one
occasion, when he was berating me for writing a dream sequence which I'd
neglected to helpfully preface with a scene of the character in bed to
signify dream, he proclaimed with authority: "People go to the movies
to be entertained and to learn something about themselves. They do
not go to the movies to be confused."

I got a B in that class; I can only imagine what grade he might have
given Atom Egoyan, whose latest film, EXOTICA, is a brilliant exercise in
the art of withholding information. Though the film is nominally
concerned with the same themes which appear throughout Egoyan's
oeuvre -- voyeurism, loss, emotional numbness -- its primary concern is
confounding the viewer. His modus operandi here, similar to that of his
previous films but more so, is a refreshing antidote to the sledgehammer
technique currently favored by Hollywood studios; where they tell you
everything three times, to be certain it sinks into even the thickest
multiplex skull, Egoyan parcels out only a third of the details necessary
to make sense of the film's early, ostensibly expository scenes.
Additional clues are gradually revealed as the film progresses, and only
in the final scene do all of the story's elements finally snap into place.

A good thing, too, because the plot Egoyan has constructed for this
puzzle is so patently ludicrous that it would probably implode if told
simply and straightforwardly. Since the film's chief pleasure, for me,
was in attempting to divine the nature of the characters' relationships
and determine the meaning of apparently random bits of narrative and just
generally figure out what the hell was going on, I am loathe to reveal
too much of the story. EXOTICA will be most effective for a tabula rasa
audience. (The blanker the better -- those lured by Miramax's misleading ad
campaign, with its emphasis on the eponymous strip club and its promise
of an "erotic thriller," will likely find themselves neither aroused nor
thrilled.) The film's protagonist is Francis, played with alarming
sincerity and depth of feeling by Bruce Greenwood. A tax auditor by day
(Egoyan's own audit was reportedly the initial inspiration for the
movie), Francis is first seen at night, at his usual table in the
creepily lush and sterile club Exotica, where a beautiful young woman
(Mia Kirshner), dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl, performs a private and
curiously asexual dance. She bares her breasts for him and presses her
cheek to his, moving against him sinuously; he stares at her with an
anguished expression and asks, repeatedly and hoarsely, "How could
anybody want to hurt you?" Both of them are watched intently by
Exotica's aggressively condescending master of ceremonies, Eric (Elias
Koteas, who also played the title role in Egoyan's THE ADJUSTER), who has
both a bird's-eye view of the proceedings from his perch above the dance
floor and a close-up view from behind the club's numerous two-way
mirrors. EXOTICA's other principal, a painfully shy pet-shop owner named
Thomas (Don McKellar), is introduced when Canadian customs officials
inspect him via another two-way mirror; on the way home from the airport,
he receives two free tickets to the ballet in lieu of cab fare when he
agrees to share a taxi, and he subsequently spends much of the film
returning to the ballet in an attempt to pick up men by offering them a
free "extra ticket." What's going on here? Well, that's for Egoyan to
know, and you to find out.

One brief scene summarizes EXOTICA's pleasures and frustrations.
Immediately following the first scene at the club, we see Francis
driving; in the passenger's seat is a blond teenage girl (Sarah Polley,
the little girl from Terry Gilliam's THE ADVENTURES OF BARON
MUNCHAUSEN). It's still dark, and Francis is dressed as he was in
Exotica -- it is clearly later or earlier that same night. They chat
innocuously for a moment, then Francis drops her off at her home. As
Egoyan cuts to the next scene, your brain is still attempting to process
the little information it's just been given. Who was that girl? What's
her relationship to Francis? What happened during the ellipse that
bridged the scene in Exotica and this scene in the car? Did this scene
take place before the club scene? Was this girl at the club? Is she one
of the dancers? At that age? What gives? All of these questions could
have been answered with just one or two brief lines of dialogue, but
Egoyan intentionally omits them -- and if he hadn't, frankly, the scene
would be banal. Almost every scene in the picture operates on this
level, especially early on, and each new revelation, however small,
produces an audible murmur from the audience, as they connect it with
what they've seen previously: "Oh, that's what was going on there."
Depending on your inclination for intellectual puzzles, this will either
thrill you (yeah, okay, that's what Miramax meant, right) or irritate the
hell out of you; judging from the grumbling I heard as I exited the
theater, there were many more of the irritated than the thrilled at the
screening I attended.

EXOTICA certainly isn't devoid of ideas. Like Peter Weir's little-seen
and underrated FEARLESS, it examines the aftermath of tragedy and the
ways in which we attempt to cope with inexpressible grief (none of these
characters has Koteas' adjuster to take care of them). Also, while the
cinema has recently been inundated with self-deluding characters, Francis
is a rarity: a man who's gone to enormous lengths to create an intricate
fantasy world for himself, but who at the same time has remained fully
cognizant of what he's done, and, on some level at least, of how bizarre
it must seem to others. Ultimately, though, the film's form is more
impressive than its content; it will appeal only to people who enjoy
movies that fuck with their heads. It's the best film I've seen so far
this year (not that January through March is generally a cornucopia of
cinematic riches), but if you don't go to the movies to be confused,
perhaps you'd best take my recommendation with a grain of salt.